Snapchat: We Aren't Stockpiling Your Private Snaps

On Friday, Snapchat updated its terms to give itself “worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to host, store, use, display, reproduce, modify, adapt, edit, publish, create derivative works from, publicly perform, broadcast, distribute, syndicate, promote, exhibit, and publicly display that content in any form and in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).”

We pointed out that this language is certainly nothing new in the industry, as apps like Facebook and Instagram basically say the same thing in their terms. It's also not that different from how the terms read before the update.

Snapchat added the word “store” when it comes to your content, and that sent users up in arms.

"First off, we want to be crystal clear: The Snaps and Chats you send your friends remain as private today as they were before the update. Our Privacy Policy continues to say—as it did before—that those messages “are automatically deleted from our servers once we detect that they have been viewed or have expired.” Of course, a recipient can always screenshot or save your Snaps or Chats. But the important point is that Snapchat is not—and never has been—stockpiling your private Snaps or Chats. And because we continue to delete them from our servers as soon as they’re read, we could not—and do not—share them with advertisers or business partners," said the company in a blog post.

"It’s true that our Terms of Service grant us a broad license to use the content you create—a license that’s common to services like ours. We need that license when it comes to, for example, Snaps submitted to Live Stories, where we have to be able to show those Stories around the world—and even replay them or syndicate them (something we’ve said we could do in previous versions of our Terms and Privacy Policy). But we tried to be clear that the Privacy Policy and your own privacy settings within the app could restrict the scope of that license so that your personal communications continue to remain truly personal."

If you want something to remain completely, 100% private, don't send it to another person via a social media app. Snapchat's terms are pretty much the same as every other company with a spot on your smartphone homescreen.